


Lifeline

by sinelanguage



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Horror, M/M, Spiders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-07-29 05:32:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7672021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinelanguage/pseuds/sinelanguage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keith hadn't needed backup on this mission- or at least, he thought he hadn't. But his mistakes propel him into something far out of his control, and he's left with little else to do but wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. atychiphobia

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Freya (morvish) for giving me direction and betaing this, with helpful notes on grammar, and also notes like "get rekt Lance"
> 
> Having some formatting issues, so italics may change at a later date. Apologies!

Dim lights hang above Keith, flickering on and off and illuminating the cargo hold in an inconsistent and eerie glow. The hallways leading to the cargo hold had held their light enough to make sneaking around difficult, but now they falter when Keith actually needs them.

  
“Keith, did you find the weapon container yet?” says Shiro over the comms, “Pidge found hers, and Hunk says the Galra haven’t noticed her at all.”

  
Keith huffs, breath louder than any of his movements had been, “I’m in the cargo hold. I should be able to find it soon.”

  
“Uh, well, you better find it _faster,_ because these fighter pilots are starting to get antsy, and I know you said that you didn’t need the extra backup, but-”

  
“I’ll find it, Lance,” Keith hisses, cutting him off, then ignores the next spout of useless babbling.

  
His statement might be a lie; the cargo hold holds nothing for them. He can see that much, even in the dark. Whatever weapon he needs to find isn’t here. It might have been, at one point, but now the bay lies empty. The only clue to something being there is a solitary bin, lid sliding off a fraction of a meter and contents empty.

  
The lights flicker again. Something shimmers along with them, a thin electrical wire of sorts, stretching across the hold. Keith could swear it wasn’t there before, but only paid it half a mind.

  
“Shiro, we have a problem,” Keith says, voice hushed into his communicator. “The mystery weapon’s not _here._ ”

  
“Are you _sure,_ ” comes a voice that wasn’t Shiro’s. “Completely _positive_ , because from the firefight out here, there has to be something inside that ship!”

  
Keith lets out a long breath, “ _Yes_ , Lance. Someone else’s taken it- there’s a container here that’s opened, but-”

  
Then, the overhead lights go out completely, the only lighting being the dim glow of wires on the ceiling. They cross over the ceiling from bulb to bulb, pattern swirling and chaotic. Footsteps reverberate off the floor, and they weren’t his own.

  
“It’s a trap,” Lance says, just as Keith thinks it, “Keith- get out of there! They knew you were coming, they’re going to take the Red Lion-”

  
Keith ignores anything else Lance said after the mention of his lion, speeding out of the cargo hold on quick and quiet feet. The electrical problems provide him an advantage, as the thin ropes of wire give off only enough light to guide his path but not enough to give him away. They weren't here before. That wouldn’t make sense. But Keith isn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, and he follows them back to his lion.

  
Shadows can only hold to his advantage so long, especially when speed becomes a priority over silence. His footsteps ring loud in his ears, and it’s only a matter of time before he’s spotted.

  
He sees the guards before they see him, peering out from the hallway corner. Two of them, armed, shoulders square and gaze attentive. Keith freezes, hiding as well as he could in the shifting shadows. Light bounces off his face, obvious and inescapable.

  
“There’s something over there,” says one of the guards, her gaze lingering to Keith, “It’s probably the pilot-”

  
“-ignore it,” says the other, “We’ve done our damage, we need to get out of here-”

  
Keith doesn’t quite parse the meaning of the guard’s sentence, but he understands the important takeaway: they haven't seen him. Not completely, anyway.

Keith runs past them. The first guard makes a move for him, but he dodges, slipping under her upper-cut by a fraction. She doesn’t make another move, and he uses the slip of judgement to tear down the next hallway, to where he stored his lion.

  
The Red Lion looks untouched, in the same position he left her in. The same thin wires that surround the room, however, tangle in a heap over her. They glow, illuminating his lion like a kaleidoscope, colors reflecting and ever-changing.

  
He should figure out what those meant- he knows for sure now they weren’t here before- but he doesn’t have the _time_. He can hear the Galra guards behind him, and he doesn’t dwell on their conversation. The one thing he knows is he needs to get off this ship, and _fast._

  
“Keith, buddy, give me an update-” Lance says in his ear, and Keith resists the urge to turn off the communicator entirely.

  
By the time he’s at the Red Lion, her maw opening and stretching the iridescent wires surrounding her, Lance is yelling at him. It sounds like Shiro is finally back, too, though his voice is muted under Lance’s ramblings.

  
“Pidge has the other container,” Shiro says, “She got it without a hitch-- it wasn’t opened like yours.”

  
“Yeah, well, maybe we’d know why if Keith actually said _anything_ -” Lance cuts in.

  
“Kind of in a rush here,” Keith says. He has a handful of wires in his fist, their texture more like thread than electrical wires. It makes them easier to tear away, and as he does the shimmering light within them extinguishes.

  
He files into the cockpit of his lion, hands at the controls before either Shiro or Lance could respond. His lion growls, a rumble he almost mistakes for a purr, and he feels a wave of discontent wash over him.

Something’s wrong, something’s horribly wrong, and he has no idea what it is.

  
Keith rolls his fingers over the controls before powering forward, “Fall back, I’m leaving the ship-”

  
It’s a mistake. If he’s honest with himself, it’s _another_ mistake. His lion’s disposition tells him enough. He continues to the exit of the hangar, and his lion groans, metallic hinges squeaking under pressure. The dash lights up, the tendrils of wires spreading across them and cloaking his view.

  
“They’re retreating- Keith, why are they _retreating_ ,” says Lance.

  
Even Shiro seems to worry, “Keith, what’s going on-”

  
“Ugh,” says Keith, and he swallows down his panic and kicks his lion into full gear, “I don’t know!”

  
He breaks free of the wires, but some still linger on his lion’s hull. The entry of the hangar remains open and unguarded, and Keith balks and stalls his lion. No one’s here, and the conversation from before plays in his head again. He pushes forward anyway, escaping the cargo ship into space.

  
Mistakes add up, and Keith hasn’t been paying attention to the arithmetic of his decisions. He’s either avoiding a trap, or running straight into the spider’s web. His lion protests again, a low growl breaking into a hiss, at a threat Keith can’t see but knows is there.

  
“What was in Pidge’s container?” says Keith, gritting his teeth in preparation for the response. He glances around the cockpit, trying to spot anything out of place. The wires still stick to the window of his dash, despite having torn them off earlier.

  
Lance makes a noise between a groan and a whine, and Shiro responds, “As Lance said earlier, we’re not opening the containers until we get back.”

  
That answers nothing. Keith watches his dash, and something skitters across it, tiny and moving in such a chaotic fashion he can’t keep track of it. Behind it, streams a wire, and it glows with the others.

  
“What, do you know what was in yours?” Lance asks, and Keith loses his gaze on the- the whatever that was.

  
“Trouble,” Keith says, even though he has no trouble spotting the next alien creature on his dash, now that he knows what to look for. Tiny, crawling bugs, leaving trails of iridescent threads in their wake.

  
His skin crawls, and he peels back from the controls, “There’s- there’s _spiders_ , in the box- they’re in my lion-”

  
“What?! Let me see-” a comlink opens, Lance peering into his ship, and Keith tries to glare without looking terrified.

  
The spiders aren’t in the box, anymore, they’re in his ship, spreading the same wire-like thread he’d seen in the cargo hold. His dash begins to smoke, and his commlink video with Lance fizzles, then Lance’s face distorts away into nothing.

  
“Can you still hear me?” Keith yells, frantically brushing spiders and webbing off his dash. The illuminated buttons on his dash tick off in wisps of smoke, until only webs and spiders remain.

  
When the lights shut out, it wasn’t a trap for him- it was the spiders, slowly consuming the Galra cargo ship, just like they slowly consume the Red Lion now. Smoke billows in the cockpit, and Keith coughs and hacks. He turns on his full visor, stopping any smoke from coming in.

  
Unfortunately, it also stops him from seeing anything, smoke clouding the cockpit. A lick of heat hits from behind him, and claustrophobia rushes over him. His panic and his lion’s tumble in a positive feedback loop, fears escalating.

  
His lion’s losing energy, and Keith is going to die with it. He’s not going to be able to get out of here with his lion, not at all. The realization hits him, and suddenly, his lion seems calm.

  
“We can still hear you- Keith, stay where you are-” comes Shiro’s voice, static through the communicator.

  
Keith can’t respond, because the maw of his lion opens wide, and she tosses him out in a wave of smoke.

He yells at her, realization hitting him that her calmness was a plan, and her plan was to get him out. He tries to grip for a tooth, but his grip is loose, and he propels into freefall and toward the Galra ship he escaped from.

  
They’re creating a wormhole, trying to escape as fast as Keith is. His trajectory leads him toward it, and he can’t do anything to stop.

  
Keith can barely hear the noise of his comms, over his heart in his ears. He turns back from the Galra ship to look at his lion’s distant form, and he chokes.

  
The webbing around his lion made her look like an entrapped fly, smoke gathering in a sphere around her unnaturally. The smoke grows and grows, covering his lion, until he can only see the light from the spider’s thread.

  
The sight of his lion isn’t why he chokes; he can see Shiro coming at her, fast, and when they collide, the tendrils of thread consume the Black Lion, waxy strings glowing as they spread.

  
“Shiro, don’t-” Keith says, but his comm fizzles into piercing static as he falls into the wormhole.


	2. arachnophobia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Frey for betaing, this time with lovely horrified reactions.

His first instinct, in the abyss of space, is to hurdle himself at the fleeing Galra cargo ship. The only momentum he has is from when he propelled out of his lion, and it’s not enough to catch up with the ship. It’s only enough to keep him in perpetual motion, slung from the wormhole and toward, well, nothing. The frictionless of space keeps him moving without his permission.

Still, he tries to create some new momentum. He attempts the jetpack propulsion on his back; it’s broken. Then he turns on his shield, off-on-off-on, but the motion’s useless. He keeps the shield on, though, as the blue light may be dim but it's the closest light he has.

All he can do is watch as the only other nearby object jettisons into the distance. It doesn’t disappear, not for a long while, but the distance between him and his one ironic salvation increases exponentially.

When the cargo ship finally becomes unseeable is when Keith begins to panic.

He has no lion. He has no lion, he has no back-up, he has absolutely nothing.

Keith stares at his fraught expression in the reflection of his visor. It clouds with his breathing, condensation forming on the cold surface between him and the vacuum of space. Something moves in his peripheral vision, but when he blinks it’s gone. His breath hitches, and when he breathes again, the puff of air hits his visor in a wisp.

Past the fogged-up visor, lies the rest of space, which is just as pleasant a sight. Keith is caught in a cold sea of stars he doesn’t recognize, with none of them looking particularly close. He thought he understood how empty space was before, but not to this magnitude.

He would die before he floats anywhere else.

Twisting around, Keith checks everything on his suit for something to do. There’s nothing for him. His movements make no noise, even though they should. There’s no sound. No air to hold it. The noise he has is his own heavy breathing, fast and jagged, his heartbeat, reverberating off the walls of his suit, and his comms, static and dead.

All he can do is wait.

He doesn’t know how time passes; he has no reference. He doesn’t even know his own velocity, only that it’s as constant as the stars around him. Maybe he could use his heartbeat, if it wasn’t jackhammering in his throat at a rabbit-pace.

After what Keith estimates is half an hour, the static on his comms part.

“Come on, come on, get back in range-” comes Lance’s voice, fuzzy and grating but nothing less of a solace.

Keith sags in relief, as much as he can sag in zero gravity. His muscles ache, tense from being so strung-up. Moving a hand to his helmet, Keith says, “Lance?”

“Keith!? Keith!” Lance says, voice suddenly much louder and more high-pitched, “Where _are_ you?”

Keith looks around for an answer; he finds the same stars as before, and it doesn’t even look like he’s moved anywhere.

“We got your Lion back to the castle ship, and you weren’t _inside_ , and do you have any idea where you are?”

“In space,” Keith says. It would be a funny answer, if it wasn’t the _only_ answer.

“Well, _duh,_ ” says Lance, “That can’t be all you know.”

Keith laughs now, high-pitched and strangled, “Um.”

“Oh _man,_ ” Lance says, “You mean you’re not even on the ship?”

“ _What_ ship? The cargo ship?”

“Well, yeah- I’ve been tracking it since we got the Red Lion back,” Lance says, “Everyone else is figuring out the bug… things. Pidge thinks they’re some kind of EMP-based lifeform, Hunk’s guarding the castle, Shiro’s…”

Lance pauses, for too long, and Keith has to wait for him to continue. A pit forms in the bottom of his gut, tense, like someone’s wringing his stomach out. Whatever state Shiro’s in, Keith is to blame, and the realization hits him fast and nearly makes him miss Lance’s concluding statement.  

“Well, the Black Lion’s not looking great because of those bugs, and they also messed up Shiro’s arm,” Lance says, “He’s- he’s going to be fine, but we’re two people down, and everyone’s freaked out.”

“Two people? I thought you said Hunk and Pidge were fine-” Keith starts, but Lance cuts him off with a guffaw.

“-you’re the other person down! Come on, you’re floating in _space,_ you’re kind of helpless here,” Lance says, and Keith quiets.

Keith realizes, just as awfully as he realized this is his blame, that Lance is right. He _is_ helpless. He’s completely at Lance’s will. Reliance isn’t a habit he wants to make, even if it’s reliance on the team, but it’s not like he has a choice.

But he does- maybe. At a faster pace than before, he turns his shield on and off again, draining its fleeting energy until it’s only a dim projection. He tries his jetpacks again, too, but they remain dead.  Lance can’t even see the movement, so Keith isn’t even sure what he’s proving.

Keeping the shield on at a dim light, Keith bites a remark at Lance, “You’re not still chasing the wrong ship, _are_ you?”

“Haha, _no,_ you come up on my radar,” Lance says, not noticing the tone. “Kind of.”

“Kind of? _Lance-_ ”

There’s a shuffle in the background, as Lance, Keith is sure, waves his arms around, “Hey! It’s a bad radar! Not my fault! It kind of pings when you talk.”

Keith says nothing, but his ornery protest of silence misses its mark.

“It’s like Marco Polo!” Lance says, then finally realizes Keith hasn’t said anything. “The… the game, you know? I say Marco, you say Polo, I try to catch you-”

“I know what it is,” Keith huffs. He doesn’t, not really, but he knows enough to surmise.

Silence returns, and it doesn’t feel like the victory Keith wants. His stomach turns again, and he feels empty and completely wrung out, like a dried up rag. A rag past its miserable use.

“Keith,” Lance says, voice low and serious,  “You’re going to have to keep talking.”

Keith, taken aback by the gravity in Lance’s voice, doesn’t say anything. He _should,_ especially given the conversation, but his words catch in his throat and stay there.  

“And I know it’s hard to keep up with my unmeasurable wit-”

The words that stuck in his throat become irrelevant, and Keith snorts. Sure. Unmeasurable wit was not the phrase _he_ would use to describe Lance’s sense of humor.

“-but it’s the only way you show up on my radar.”

Keith pauses, and can hear an intake of breath on the other side of the comms. Before Lance can say anything, Keith says, “Okay. Okay, fine.”

A roadblock hits him. What does he even talk about? How he’s going to die out here? That he might have gotten his Lion destroyed? That he might have gotten _Voltron_ destroyed? Two lions, their leader-

“Good start,” Lance says, cutting off Keith’s rapid-fire thought process.

Keith groans, “You try making _small talk_ while you’re flying through space.”

“Wait, you’re _moving_?” Lance sounds baffled. He hasn’t been connecting the dots.

“Yes?” Keith questions, “That’s how physics works, Lance. I started moving, and there’s nothing to stop me from moving. It’s _space._ ”

“Yeah, like there’s anything that can stop you, anyway,” Lance says, and it sounds like a compliment. Lance must have realized that, too, as he continues, “You’re too- uh- you’re- annoying.”

“Annoying,” Keith repeats. He doesn’t even need to rib at Lance any more than that.   

“Oh, come on! You’re supposed to be saying more than one _word_ , you need to get on my comms, and you’re _moving,_ so you need to keep talking-” Lance covers, poorly, and Keith laughs.

As his laughter quiets, the discomfort of space inevitably breaks the moment. Keith listens to Lance continue to try to connect annoying with unstoppable, but his shield flickers, energy running thin from his struggles before. It turns off in a blink, and Keith shivers.

It’s more than a shiver; his skin twitches under his suit. Goosebumps raise on his flesh, but the trail doesn’t follow the path goosebumps normally did. His skin crawls, a scatter up his arm, and Keith’s breath catches.

His skin isn’t crawling, something is _crawling on his skin._

“Oh no, oh _no no no,_ ” says Keith, trying to catch the creature under his suit. It has to be the spiders, it _has_ to, and it’s moving to who-knows-where to do who-knows-what. He grips his own arm, trying to catch the spider under his suit. It doesn’t work; the mesh is too thick and the spider too fast.

“Wait- Keith?! What’s going on?” Lance says through the comms, “What- you’re in the middle of _nowhere,_ what can even be happening-”

“Spiders, there’s spiders, it’s-” Keith yells. The spider scratches up his neck, tiny little legs scampering out of Keith’s range. It crawls up his jawline, then to his ear, then suddenly, the comms go static again.

“No, no no no,” Keith says, to no one, now. The spider’s stuck in his comms, eating away at the electricity inside the device. Lance can’t hear him, he can’t hear Lance, and his one tether to safety snaps.

He can hear the spider, in the comms. Under the static, there’s small crackling noises, popping in his ear. If he’s still enough, he can count the legs, and how many sit on the rim of his ear and how many sit in the comm. He can’t have it in his ear- he _can’t._

Clawing at the back of his helmet, Keith pries his fingers under the release. He needs  to get this _out,_ the spider’s just going to eat away at his suit just like it did his lion, sapping what energy he has left from his suit, his _life support-_

He freezes, fingers twitching under his helmet. Protecting his life support from the spider would be pretty useless if he was dead from unsealing his suit.

As jagged and sudden as he froze, he tears his hands away from the back of his helmet and traps them under his armpits. It does nothing to heat his freezing fingers, but it stops them from doing more damage.

His breath hits the visor, and the static dims. Keith doesn’t move, not even as the spider leaves his comms. Horror at almost pulling off his own helmet eats at him, and he shudders, but doesn’t protest, as the spider trails down his jaw and to the front of his suit to his life support.

“-eith? Keith?”

Keith presses a hand to his helmet. The movement doesn’t accomplish anything, but it grounds him back in reality.

“I can hear you,” Keith says, “I- I can hear you.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Lance says. He sounds panicked. “Your comms went down for a bit-”

“-there’s a spider in my suit,” Keith cuts him off, voice cracking in the middle of spider. “There’s a spider in my suit!”

“Hey, don’t panic, that’s- that’s-”

“ _There’s a spider in my suit,_ ” Keith enunciates, waving his arms around helplessly.

“Okay! Fine! You can panic,” Lance sounds panicked himself, more than before. “Do you know where it is? Is that why the comms went down?”

“It’s in my life support system.”

The comms still. Keith can hear his breath again, fast and uneven. He can hear Lance’s breath, too, a sharp intake with no exhale.

Finally, Lance exhales with a pop, then says, “That’s bad.”

“Y-yeah,” Keith agrees. “No kidding.”

“That’s really, really bad,” Lance continues over him. “Like- okay, worst case scenario bad. What’s the spider even _doing_? Is it making webs?”

Oddly enough, it hasn’t yet. The last spiders had trailed his lion with wires of light, yet this one isn’t making a thread.

“No, it’s just in my life support,” Keith says, and Lance protests with a whine.

“We should probably not focus on that,” Lance says. “You should just- keep talking.”

“About _what_?” Keith says. “I’m lost in _space,_ with an alien in my life support-”

“Then don’t talk about that!”

Keith’s focus on the argument breaks, and he blinks rapidly, as if his eyes focused would help his conversational focus.

“You’re going to be _fine_ ,” Lance says, before Keith can recover. His tone marked with determination, Lance continues, “You just have to- uh, not stay still- and talk. Not about your _situation,_ just about _anything._ Anything! Easy!”

This doesn’t strike Keith as easy. His fingers twitch inside his gloves. If anything, wafting in space has been the most difficult task he’s had since initially forming Voltron. He _wishes_ he could do anything but stay still and _talk_.

“Ugh, you’re impossible,” Lance says. “Just give me one-word responses every, whatever, five ticks.”

“Okay,” Keith says, then takes in a breath.

As promised, Lance continues, “I’ll just talk and uh- keep track of the time it takes you respond.”

Keith waits, patiently. His breath evens, panic from earlier diffusing, however slowly.   

“Keith, say something-” Lance tries, and Keith almost feels bad at how worried he sounds.

Still- he _almost_ feels bad. Keith says, lightly, “It hasn’t been five ticks yet.”

“What?” Another squawk from Lance.

“You said every five ticks,” Keith says, and Lance groans.

“Fine, fine, be as literal as you want,” Lance says. “Whatever works. You’re getting closer on my radar, I should be able to get you soon.”

Keith hopes Lance is right, as the spider still sits, right under the red V of his suit. Again, he’s at Lance’s will, but he’s less bothered than before. Given his own decisions up to now, it might even be for the best.

He’s grateful, really, the spider’s in his life support, and not his comms.

“I really messed up back there,” Keith admits in the silence that follows, before five ticks even pass.

“Haha, I know, right?” Lance says, then backtracks, “I mean- uh- that’s why I’m- _we’re_ \- here. As back-up. To cover your back.”

“Yeah,” Keith says. He shudders, as he feels the spider shift. There’s no way he’s going to last long, with his life support’s energy drained out. The spider clicks and ticks like a timebomb in his suit, just waiting for another energy source after it finishes him off.

Even if Lance finds him, Keith can’t let the spider leave his suit- he _can’t._ It’ll just eat the Blue Lion alive. It’s either leave the suit on and the spider in, or take the suit off and breath. In the quiet pause of space and conversation, he can calculate the equations of his mistakes, and balance for the best outcome.

It just happens that the outcome doesn’t include _him._

“I guess that’s why we’re a team,” Keith says, his voice shaking, “To cover each other’s backs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A special shout-out to my roommate. I left for a week on vacation, and when I came back, there were so many dirty dishes in the sink and garbage outside the trash that flies infiltrated our apartment. My skin crawled for days! What a fucking inspiration.


	3. autophobia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY: this is now four chapters and not three. Sorry. Pacing wasn't working out any other way. 
> 
> Thanks to Frey for the betaing, for direction and tune ups this time, as well as comments such as "wah" and "WAH".

“I got lost at the mall once,” Lance says. The two of them had fallen into a pattern of conversation, Lance talking about whatever he wants, and Keith making small comments back to make sure he’s on the radar. It’s easy, it keeps Lance on track, and it follows his five-ticks-rule.

It keeps Keith from thinking about the spider in his life support and his inevitable demise, too. His suit’s getting colder, and his air thinner. The spider’s work has taken a fast toll on his suit, and time ticks on, fast and unstoppable.

“That’s not remotely similar,” Keith says. “I’m lost in _space._ Not a _mall.”_

Lances protests, “It’s kind of similar! I mean, my mom freaked out a ton.”

It’s not at all similar. Keith isn’t even sure why Lance is bringing this up. Lance nearly fell out of an airlock, back on the castleship. That seems much more relevant, but instead he focuses on _this._

“Why did you get lost, anyway?” Keith isn’t sure he wants to know.

“Now _that’s_ a good story,” Lance says, “Okay- okay, you need context for this. Have you ever been to like, a super mall? Our mall isn’t- wasn’t- remotely similar.”

Keith pauses, but can’t visualize Lance’s not-super-mall-mall. “Then why are you bringing it up?” he asks.

“To- to set the tone, haven’t you ever heard someone tell a story before? Jeez, it’s just- it was a small mall,” Lance says. Keith can practically see his dramatized eye-roll, with how much Lance conveys in his voice.  

Keith hums, “So it’s more embarrassing you got lost in it.”

“Oh no, no no, you’re not- you’re not setting _my_ story’s _tone,_ ” Lance squawks. “This is- this is _my_ embarrassing childhood story-”

Keith laughs, and Lance continues to snowball his fluster until it’s enough for Keith to take pity. In a moment of mercy, Keith asks rhetorically, “Isn’t it _me_ that’s supposed to be talking?”

Lance pauses. “Yes! Yes, actually, it is. Come on, I’m sure even _you_ have embarrassing stories.”

Lance doesn’t take back the kind-of-compliment this time, and he doesn’t have the chance to. With a twist in his gut, Keith realizes he can see Lance on the horizon. The blip of the Blue Lion hangs on the edge of space, distinct color and form standing out against the splattering of distant stars.

He hasn’t seen anything but dim stars in ages, and he has trouble quelling his initial reaction of _relief_  The reality of the situation, the temporality of his safety and the spider in his suit, means nothing right now. He laughs, sound loud in his suit. Even if his life support doesn’t last, he’ll be be back to something tangible. Something with gravity, with sound- with _anything_ other than empty nothingness and static _._

“Hey Lance,” Keith says. He can’t keep the excitement out of his tone, “I see you.”

“What, really? Oh man, I didn’t want to get my hopes up,” Lance says. “I mean- well. I can’t see you. But you’re really close on the radar!”

It takes some fumbling directions for Lance to find him, but as the Blue Lion closes in, directions become airy laughter. Her mouth opens, and Keith falls in, hitting the back of the lion’s cockpit and finally stopping.

The lion’s jaw closes, and Keith lands on the ground in a heap. Gravity is anticlimactic. It should be more important, to finally have a steady ground under his feet, but instead he just feels bruised. Pulling himself up the wall, Keith groans, legs shaking beneath him.

“Keith!” Lance says, and the sound doesn't come from Keith’s comms.

Keith looks up, and Lance smiles at him, wide. His eyes crinkle in the corners, and he moves too close and too fast for Keith to focus on anything else.

He hadn't realized he was cold until Lances grabs his arm. Of course he’s cold- his life support is running thin and space chills everything to the bones. But the warmth of Lance’s palm contrasts with the freeze he accustomed to so much, that he finally understands how cold that freeze _was._

His shoulder hits Lance’s chest hard as he falls forward, and he stays just to take in the heat.

“Holy crow, you’re cold,” Lance says, as if this is new to Keith. Keith mumbles nonsense, then leans further into Lance. If Lance protests, Keith doesn’t care- gravity hadn’t brought him any comfort, but this warmth does.

However, the inside of his visor is still cold as ice, and the outside fogs up in the heat’s contrast. He can’t see anything other than the reflection of his own souring expression. If he only had his vision to go off of, it would be like he’s back in zero-gravity and alone.

His previously-found relief drains out of him. Like a sieve, relief sifts out and leaves only anxious grit behind.

Lance must have noticed the steamed visor too, as he holds the base of Keith’s helmet with one hand. Keith careens away from it, and ignores the confused whine Lance returns.  

“Get your helmet off, it’s fogging up-” Lance says, and Keith jerks further away. He meets the wall of the cockpit with a thunk, back hitting first and head following it.

Lance protests, loudly and obtrusively, and his hands find Keith’s helmet again.

“The spider’s still inside,” Keith says. “We can’t let it _out._ ”

This doesn’t deter Lance. “Yeah, well! You have to take that helmet off- how much life support do you even have _left_ -”

Keith wheezes a jagged breath, and suddenly, he’s very conscious of how _thin_ the air he takes back in is. His expression scrunches, ugly and panicked, and he’s grateful for the fog clouding his face.

“Come on, you have to get that thing off-” Lance tries, hooking his fingers under the helmet. Keith can’t dislodge him, at least not by moving.

“You saw what it did to my lion!” Keith yells. He can’t see Lance’s expression, but his fingers remain locked.

“There were a lot more spiders!” Lance’s voice shakes, and so does his grip.

It’s a fair point, but Keith won’t take it. He huffs, and the air feels thinner and thinner. “So you’re willing to risk _Voltron_ by underestimating a spider-”

“That’s not it at all!” Lance says. He wipes off the fog from Keith’s visor with his gloved hand, then enunciates, “Keith, come on!”

Keith meets Lance’s eyes, but only briefly. Lance looks horrified, eyes wide but hyper-focused on Keith with an unmatchable intensity. Looking at Lance too long just wrings out his insides all over again.

The side of Lance’s face, just over his right ear, makes for a better place to look. “You said we cover each others’ backs- that’s what I’m doing,” Keith says.

Lance sags, shoulders falling and expression hidden, “This isn’t what I meant.”

It’s hypocritical- it really is. How many times has _Lance_ put himself in harm’s way? It’s not like this situation is any different than Lance caught in an explosion, or caught in the airlock, or anything else on the laundry list of reckless self-sacrificing moments. He wasn’t in the position to criticize Keith’s plans.

When Lance turns back, his breath fogs up the visor. Before Keith has the chance to stare blankly at his own reflected expression, Lance wipes the visor clean. Instead of his own reflection, he stares at Lance’s, as tense and stubborn as before.

“We can both get out of here,” Lance says. He grabs Keith’s helmet with both hands, now, fingers trembling over the release. “I’ll get us both out of here.”

Keith blinks, rapidly, wondering if Lance knew the chances of that working. Maybe he did- maybe his priorities weighted differently, and whatever slim chance of survival was worth it. And while Keith wants the final say in this decision, just by Lance’s gaze, he knows who has firmer footing.

“Okay,” Keith says. “If you’re sure that-”

He doesn’t have the chance to finish; Lance pries the helmet off, and air rushes back to him. The warm gust washes over him, and Keith chokes on it, and it takes him a moment to breath in and out at a steady pace.

The helmet clatters to the ground, and Lance’s grip returns on Keith’s shoulder. He looks as relieved as Keith is tense. He’s close, awfully close, and Keith can finally see him without the visor in the way.

Before Lance can distract him, Keith finishes his cut-off sentence. “If you’re sure you can catch the _spider,_ ” Keith says, without the bite he intended, “Then you can take off the helmet.”

“Right,” says Lance, “Is the spider still-”

Keith stops listening, but not intentionally. As Lance asks where the spider is, it scatters along his ribcage. It leaves an itchy trail of dust between the soft fabric of his shirt and the hard encasing of his suit, and Keith scatters backward.

“Keith!?” Lance says. “Is it- okay- okay okay okay, hold _still._ ”

Holding still is a lot to ask for, with catching the spider being a real possibility. Keith doesn’t manage it- he squirms and withers, even after Lance grabs his arm. The spider catches on Keith’s torso, between the pinch of his suit and his side.

Then, it climbs up his side, back to his neck. Keith claws at it with one hand and tries to pinch it with his shoulder, anything to stop it.

“I’ll get it! Hold still!” Lance says, and Keith looks wildly at him. His shoulder scrunches to his chin, and his hand clings to the same shoulder. He can’t feel the spider anymore- it’s stopped moving.

Lance’s gaze pins him; it’s focused solely on the side of Keith’s profile, where his shoulder meets his face.

“Hold still,” Lance repeats. Slowly, he holds the bottom of Keith’s chin, and pushes it away from his shoulder. The grip stays as Lance reaches to something Keith can’t see. Lance’s thumb prods into the bone of Keith’s jaw, and Keith can’t see that either, so he watches Lance’s resolute expression instead.

Then, suddenly, Lance pulls away.

“Ah ha!” Lance says. His hands clasp together, concave together like the shell of a clam. Dust shakes out of his hand, particles of the spider falling to the floor. Then, Lance squirms, and pulls a face. “Oh man, I can’t believe you had this in your suit- it’s _wriggling,_ this is so gross.”

Keith blinks at Lance. Then, he looks away, and peers Lance’s hands. Lance keeps moving, shifting with the ensnared spider as it moves. After all the trouble he’s been through, he finally has some control over his situation. He’s not stuck in the abyss, with a spider in his suit. The spider’s right there, under Lance’s hands.

Keith places a hand over Lance’s, and one under it.

“Um?” questions Lance.

Ignoring Lance, Keith smashes down, and Lance’s hands meet in a flat line. The motion is met with a satisfying crunch. Dark gray smoke falls out between Lance’s fingers, some of it following up his arms, other bits and pieces dripping to the floor- behaving in a way smoke shouldn’t.

“Keith- _Keith, what did you do-_ ”

It’s not smoke. It’s not smoke at all. It’s _spiders._

“What- _what,”_ Keith reaches for Lance, but only halfway. His hand freezes. Tiny electric spiders cover Lance’s arms, some falling off and scattering to more satisfying prospects. They crawl on the ground, and if Keith thought the original spiders were hard to catch, they had nothing on _this._  

“Keith,” Lance waves his arms, and spiders fall off like dust. “ _Help._ ”

Keith freezes; he’s been here, caught in a spider-invested lion, and now he’s back into one. He wants to help, but he can only gape, because he has no idea _how._


	4. astrophobia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Frey for betaing this again!!! most of it. I just want this out in the world and done. 
> 
> Sorry for the wait! I've been in the process of moving to a new, fly-less apartment.

The spiders move from energy source to energy source, without leaving a trail of thread behind. Maybe the newly hatched spiders are too young, or the thread to small, but either way, Keith can’t keep track of them well.

“Shoot them!” Keith yells. “You have a bayard!”

Lance laughs, high-pitched. “Nu-uh! Won’t work, tried that on- uh- when we first saw the spiders. On your lion, I tried to hit them, but- but they absorbed it-”

Then, Lance flings an arm, and spiders pelt Keith in the face. They don’t stay around, falling off Keith as fast as they landed. “Wait, you- you tried to shoot at my _lion_?”

“Is now really the time!” Lance squeaks; most of the spiders left him, scrambling to his Lion instead. “ _My_ lion is kind of freaking out here _!”_

The spiders splatter the cockpit, leaving smoking components in their wake, ignoring both Keith and Lance. Lance looks fraught, trying to eye each and every spider at the same time. “Yeah, _you’re_ kind of freaking out, too,” Keith says, as if that will help. 

Lance tries to clear the spiders from the dash, his movements erratic and his expression much too grim. The spiders that Lance brushes away simply climb back up his arm and to the next piece of equipment. Lance fights an uphill battle, but doesn’t seem to be stopping.

“Keith,” he says, as the spiders come back like tide under his fingers, “I don’t- I don’t know what to do-” The dash smokes and crackles in front of them. “I don’t know if there’s anything we _can_ do!”

Swatting away the spiders, Lance’s frantic desperation to protect his Lion colors every motion he makes. He wears a grimace the same way he wears a grin, full-faced and unapologetic. He makes the same moves Keith had, before Keith lost his Lion, and they’ll be to the same effect.

Lance was right; there wasn’t anything they could do. Keith tried to fight this same battle before and lost. Whatever move they took wouldn’t help- he’d tried everything, and confrontation didn’t _work,_ it just got him stuck. Every action he made just propelled him into something worse, and now he’s dooming Lance too.

Even as the spiders ignore them, they seal their fate. He’s trapped back in space, in a suit he can’t get out of. But, he realizes with a jolt, he doesn’t _have_ to get out of it, this time. Not exactly- he’s just not going to try to take off his metaphorical helmet.

“We can’t do anything,” Keith says, “So we don’t do anything.”

“That doesn’t- that doesn’t make any _sense,_ ” Lance whines. There’s a bite to his tone, but it doesn’t feel directed at Keith. “I don’t want to sit here- and- and wait to die, drowning in _spiders._ ”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

The spiders crawl over Lance’s hands, and he doesn’t shake them off. “That’s what it sounds like! You want them to eat us alive!”

“They don’t want us, they want the electricity,” Keith says. “So we give them what they want.”

“And then we die. We let them eat my Lion and then we _die-_ ”

“-not if we get them out of here first.”

Lance stares, finally looking away from the carpet of spiders around them. Keith recognizes his expression- doubt barely encroaching over fear. He recognizes it from the reflection of his visor, when he was floating through the abyss of space.

“We turn on the thrusters, open the airlocks, and get them out,” Keith wavers, voice momentarily caught in his throat. “We just need to aim the thrusters in the right direction after, and save all the energy for life support. It’s- it’s just physics.”

“It’s just physics,” Lance echoes. He doesn’t sound convinced.

“The team’ll be able to find us,” Keith continues. “As long as we stay alive until we get in range.”

Lance had found him alive, anyway. It’s not like the team can’t do the same.

“Okay, fine, that’s-” Lance pauses, “Fine. But- the _airlock?_ Do we really need to open the airlock? I’ve had enough with airlocks.”

Keith nods, and Lance groans. Lance’s fingers twitch against the dash, and he doesn’t even seem to be paying attention to the spiders under them. Keith hadn’t thought the airlock would set Lance off, but it does, and Keith watches as Lance heaves himself up for a retort.

“I already had to open it to get you _in,_ ” Lance says. He brings a hand to his helmet, fingers splay on the sides. “And that was- it was- ugh.”

It’s not a very compelling argument. Lance, despite his skittishness around the airlock, doesn’t seem to think so either. The visor on his helmet clicks in place, even though his fingers shake.

“If we’re going to do this, you’re taking the pilot seat,” Lance says. Despite protesting the airlock, he isn’t choosing the safest place from it. Keith’s brows furrow, and Lance elaborates. “It’s the best chance you have at staying in- and you don’t have a suit, so if you get stuck out there…”

Of course- it’s kind of hypocritical, really. After making such a stint about Keith dying, here Lance is, offering himself as a shield. The odds stack better, but not by _much,_ and Keith wants to point it out like the contrarian he is but they don’t have the time to argue.

“Fine,” Keith bites, and sits in the pilot’s seat as if it’s an argument in itself. He thrums his fingers against the seat, antsy and impatient. It feels unfamiliar, to sit in the Blue Lion’s chair, but not uncomfortable. He can’t feel the purr that he would in his own lion, but it’s not the alien sensation he anticipated.

Lance positions himself in front of the pilot’s seat, kneeling so he still has a view of the dash. Keith can’t see much- only the fizzling displays of their trajectory.

“I think we’re lined up,” says Lance, as he swipes a swath of spiders off the dash. “Blue should be able to get us out of here.”

He pauses, and doesn’t look back. Keith doesn’t want to see his expression, but he can hear it in the way Lance’s voice wavers, “-h-hold on!”

The airlock opens, and Keith winces. Lance’s fingers hold tight to the dash, and the dash quiets to a faint glow, simmering under the spiders. As Keith predicted, the vacuum takes the spiders, eager for the energy elsewhere. They flee the dash, skittering and floating away, to the outside of the Blue Lion.

It’s a relief- it’s a relief until Keith watches them leave the dash, and watches the coordinates of their trajectory shift. They’re heading for the castle ship, for a moment, then they’re _not,_ head perpendicular the radius of the ship. Straight away from any possible communicator contact.

“Lance,” Keith tries, but his voice dies in the tug of the airlock. Lance’s fingers stay clenched to the dash, his shoulders shaking, and Keith doesn’t have a choice.

He stretches away from the comfort of the pilot’s seat, above Lance and to the controls. It doesn’t take much to set them on the right path, but the pull away from the seat and toward the dash is enough to off-center him. Before he knows it, he’s no longer in control of his own movements, and he’s being wrenched away from the dash and away from Lance, and it takes him a moment to realize what’s happening.  

Space is trying to take him back.

It pulls him by the feet, back to its desolate emptiness. Keith’s grip on the pilot’s seat falters, his fingers slip, and everything turns upside down. Someone yells, and he doesn’t know if it’s him or Lance. He twists, unprepared to right himself and unable to hold on. Missing a grapple on anything, he’s only stopped when Lance grabs onto his wrist and tugs.

“Blue- Blue- close the airlock,” Lance yells, and Keith flings a hand at the pilot’s seat. It misses, fingernails scratching the surface. “The spiders- it doesn’t matter- _close the airlock!”_

The airlock stalls, then closes, and gravity crumples them both. When Keith hits the ground, his kneecaps thunk against the floor and his armor cracks. Lance hangs folded over the chair, hand still clenched on Keith’s glove. His cheek presses against the ground, squished and bruising.

“Thanks, Blue,” Lance says. He hasn’t moved, so the sound comes out strangled and muffled. “Thanks a lot.”

It takes effort, for both of them to pull themselves off the floor. Well- it takes effort for Keith, and it takes effort to pry Lance’s fingers off, so Lance can unfold himself from the chair. The air around them stills, the lights dim, and the Blue Lion hums quiet.

Lance leans against the back of the chair, and Keith lays down on the floor across from him. The white noise of electricity settles over them, and Keith plays with the release on one of his gloves. He takes it off, and tosses it, listening but not watching as it clatters away.

It’s not calm. Not really. The dust hasn’t settled, and while it’s starting to, Keith knows it won’t fully calm until the threat’s completely gone. While the inside of the lion’s quiet and still, the spiders are outside, so the outside isn’t.

Metaphorically, that is. As he’s painfully aware, there’s no sound in space. The spiders won’t even scamper on the edges of the Blue Lion, only work on their destruction in antithetical quiet.

The only sound, for a while, is frantic breathing, and Lance muttering soft assurances. It’s not directed at Keith. It takes Keith a moment to realize it’s not directed at Lance himself, either, but at his lion.

The quiet in the ship, however, doesn’t last. Lance is here- of course it doesn’t last. “Blue got all the spiders out,” Lance says. “She should be able to keep them from getting back in, too.”

Keith’s breath catches, then calms; he hadn’t even thought about _that._

“You’ve got to be kidding me- you didn’t think of that? Keith!”

Lance picks up on that reaction- of all times for him to be observant. “You, uh, had my back.”

Keith glances over, and Lance stares at him, eyes wide but grin wider. It should look _smug_ on Lance, but instead it toys the line between elated and annoying. Despite recognizing the expression as positively infuriating, Keith can't bring himself to be annoyed. 

Despite the smile, Lance recovers and groans through it his teeth. “At least you get it,” he says. He doesn’t sound as put-off as he should.

Keith snorts, not dignifying a response, then pulls himself up. His other glove hangs loose over his hand, and he pulls it off at shakes it. Nothing comes out, so he tosses it to the corner as well.

His chestplate goes next, and after Keith shakes it and tosses it across the room, Lance finally comments. “Hey- hey, I know that’s _kind_ of useless to you, but-”

“-I’m checking for spiders,” Keith cuts him off. He still needs to get to his boots. He hovers over his knee plates, waiting for Lance to respond before he continues.  

Lance stares, then shudders, and begins to peel off his suit like a banana. It takes Keith longer to shed his leg guards than it does for Lance to shed his entire suit. Both the sets sit between them, with Lance’s helmet- and his comms- piled on top.

“You know,” Lance starts. Keith, despite hearing the encroaching dramatics in Lance’s voice, lets him continue. “You’re not very good at being _rescued._ ”

Keith doesn’t protest, but he muffles a groan with his palm.

That was a mistake, as Lance continues. “I mean- I’m better at being rescued than you are. Do you know how long I was tied to a tree? A long time! You took forever-”

“-mmf,” Keith says. This isn’t something to brag about, but he doesn’t expect Lance to stop. He doesn’t make an effort to stop him, either.

“And- and the first airlock, too!” Lance exclaims with a wave of his hands, “You’re just bad at this.”

“Sure,” Keith says. He’s bad at being _rescued,_ and it’s easy to refute how silly Lance sounds, but he lets it slide. Lance deserves it, just this once.

Lance continues to babble, on and on about how much of a pain it was to rescue Keith, and Keith remarks with as many grunts as he can manage from his splayed position on the floor. His eyes close, and Lance’s sound washes over him. It isn’t relaxing, exactly, but it’s familiar, and it’s warm.

Keith only sits up when the static of the comms peak, and another voice- one that isn’t Lance’s- pips in.

“Hey, uh, I’m just going to continue talking into the comms, just in case anyone can hear me-” comes a familiar voice, low and worried.

“Hunk!” Lance says. He’s clattering to his feet before Keith can even sit up. “Hunk, am I glad to hear you-”

“Lance! Do you have Keith?” says Hunk, and Keith tries to respond. He only manages a wimpy “hey.”

It’s enough for Hunk, though, and enough for everyone else to come on the comms.

“Why are you coming in so slow?” says Allura, “You should be able to reach a much higher speed than what you’re _at._ ”

“The weapon can do a lot of damage,” says Shiro. He sounds tired, but _alive,_ and Keith sinks back to the floor. “We’ll be able to take care of your Lion when you get back- Pidge and Coran figured out how to stop the spiders.”

“Actually they’re more of ants- it’s the hivemind-” protests Hunk.

“-that’s a technicality,” says Pidge. “They’re obvious arachnids, and the webbing is more like spiders.”

Everyone’s fine- everyone’s fine, and they know what to do about the spiders, and remarkably, despite the string of mistakes Keith left in his awake, none of them would perish. The dust settles, even if the spiders don't. Everything's  _fine,_ they have his set of errors patched. 

“Is Keith alright?” asks Shiro, as Pidge and Hunk continue to bicker over spider technicalities in the background. “He hasn’t said much.”

“I’m fine,” Keith says. “But- we have company.”

The comms pause. “We have spiders?” Lance finishes the punchline for Keith, before Keith can stop him.

The comms turn clattered with confused protests and indignant squabbling over who’s fault this was and why did it have to be _spiders,_ and Keith has the gall to laugh.


End file.
